Potassium nitrate used in gunpowder but also has many legitimate uses

That statement is just soooooooo annoying – and wrong that is boggles the mind. I despair for America.

Here we have three people charged with felonies for letting a ten month old drink. Sure, letting a child that young drink – especially until they get drunk – is in bad taste. It shows poor judgement, and does pose a certain risk to the child. Yet, its a mild risk, and this is nothing that the government should be involved in.

Basically, its a borderline case of the nanny state at work.

I could be in the circus!

I walked in the door this evening to an empty Harley cage (he is the blue and gold macaw.) Man, my heart jumped right up into my throat….. However he called out to me, and was sitting on the kitchen sink, eating loaf bread. I’ve never been more relieved.

I was lucky. Based on the amount of poop, he had been out between 1-2 hours. (Get a bird and learn to guage time passage by bird poop!!) Nothing valuable got destroyed. He hadn’t gotten on my blue crowns (Kermit) cage and hurt her. All he did was make a big hole in a cardboard box on the counter, and break into the loaf bread. I can live with that. When I saw that empty cage, my first thought was “oh lord, I hope he isn’t hurt.” My second was “Oh lord, I hope he didn’t destroy anything too valuable.”

He got out through a door right at the top of the cage, which I knew was a bit dodgy. I’m not the handiest person, so I called my dad and he came over. He just put a screw into the door sealing it shut (since I have no use for it), from the outside where Harley can’t get to it.

Man, that was traumatic. On the other hand, Harley was quite mellow this evening. We were able to play a couple of games that usually he is too wired for on weeknights.

The moral of this story is that if you see anything you even suspect is dodgy about your birds environment, make it not dodgy ASAP. Way, way too many bad things could have happened with his getting out.

Richard

There have been three articles lately that have my eye, about the downsides of the Internet. One, Narcissistic Blog disorder and other conditions of online kookery, by Lore Sjöberg is rather tongue in cheek. Another, Dvorak: Unplug the Computer, Sell the TV, and Get a Life, is a bit more middle ground. The last, Competing Messages: What Matters?, is dead serious, and garners a bit of a flame from Stowe Boyd in response as well.

Obviously, the Bad side of the Internet is the point of each of these articles. And, each of the articles is right. You can see all the effects that they talk about all over the place. This blog is something of an example of Lore’s Narcissistic Blog Disorder, for example. I’ve been blogging for six months now, and I don’t think I have a single consistent reader. Thats humbling to a conceited bastard like myself.

Though, all of them get the “main thing” partially wrong. This is best explained in the tongue in cheek article by Lore

Amusement Identify Disorder
This is a sort of inverse cousin to Pugilistic Discussion Syndrome, in which the individual has difficulty distinguishing between an online game and real life. The individual sees his or her online character as being as “real” as the individual’s real-world self, if not more so. One manifestation of this disorder is the tendency to treat game accomplishments such as impressive magic items or guild leadership as the equivalent of real-life accomplishments like pursuing a successful career or raising a family. In addition to impairing the individual’s personal growth in the real world, this disorder also makes them extremely boring at parties.

I’m not at all sure that the “real world” is more valuable than the virtual world. Take the long view – both are equally pointless. Two hundred years from now, virtually nobody is going to remember you from either world. In the end, its your internal satisfaction that is what is important. So, lets say you manage a large raiding guild in Everquest for three years, or you are CEO of Coke. Which is a better thing? Whichever you want to be the better thing. Its all a crap shoot. You can listen to those who think that the real world is better, acknowledge their opinion, and then move on. Or, vice versa.

What you decide is important, is what is important. Not some artificial outside measurement, that others attempt to impose on you. They are not living your life, you are. Listen to them, weigh what they say, make your decision and get on with things. If they don’t like it, tough. Everybody is selling something – even Dave Rogers, who is selling a point of view.

Technically, I’m a gamer. Practically, I rarely game. When I do, I’m most often the GM, but its so bloody rare for me to actually run a game, that its fair to call me a gamer wannabe.

And, I suck as a GM. Too much of a control freak, too little into prep.

But, I found two things that interest me very, very, very much. I was actually looking for another good gaming podcast, aside from Dragon’s Landing. I like Dragon’s Landing, though its one of my subscribed podcasts that I don’t listen to that much.

Well, take a look at this – Mythic role playing. Oooh boy, does that look interesting. I’m buying a copy tonight, and I’ll post a review of it at some near point.

Just a quick side note: I might not play, but boy do I collect RPG books. And that includes these downloadable PDFS, of which I have 2-300 dollar’s worth. Basically, its a PDF file that you buy, download, and either read on your computer, or print. Good stuff.

Now, for a different style item, take a quick look at this self contained adventure that I just heard about, but which is very, very intriguing.Take a look at the Mountain Witch. This looks incredibly interesting. I just might have to give it a shot, even though I’m not sure I can find a third, or fourth player to round the group up to four.

There are some very interesting gaming items out there at the moment.

The Missouri Breaks is an old (1976) but darn good western. It stars Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. I just finished up watching it for the first time in years, and I still enjoy it totally. The only thing it really has going for it are the performances by Brando, Nicholson, and Randy Quaid. And, Brando’s peformance is way, way over the top, as an eccentric, deeply disturbed dandy of an assassin – or regulator, as he is called.

I’m not going to recap the movie, or offer any critical insights. Its just a lovely film, and I recommend you watch it.

Its amazing how I don’t relax when I’m working toward a goal. I had a fun evening last night, but I didn’t relax, because I had an Agenda. And I was associating with people. I never do unwind in the presence of people. I’m pretty strongly introverted. I’m an INTP, if you are familiar with Myers-Briggs personality types.

Man, Pizza Hut has really gone downhill. I’ve been on a pizza kick recently, and I’ve been craving Pizza Hut pizza. I’ve eaten at several of them over the past few weeks and none of them have been good experiences. The pizza has been decent, but the dining ambiance has seriously lacked. Well, I’ve thought that for months about the one in Canton – Carmen and I ate here a couple of times before she headed out to California. They fucked something up each time. That was over one year ago. Right now, I’m sitting in the Canton one, and the air conditioning is broken. The temperature is only about 90, so its not too terribly bad, and its likely not even their fault. But it sure doesn’t reflect well on them.

www.schlockmercenary.com I just “found” a new web comic that has had me laughing out loud a couple of times. Its a daily, and I started in the archives way back in 2003. I’ll be back blogging when I’ve caught up to the present in it. I just entered 2004.

Paris Hilton is being punished far, far more than the average person who committed her crime, simply because she is a famous, snobby little princess bitch. Sheriff Baca was one hundred percent correct when he said

“My message to those who don’t like celebrities is that punishing celebrities more than the average American is not justice,” Baca said.

And, in another article

Baca also charged that Hilton received a more severe sentence than the usual penalty for such a crime, which he said would have been either no jail time or direct placement in home confinement with electronic monitoring.

“The only thing I can detect as special treatment is the amount of her sentence,” the sheriff said.

Correct. It isn’t justice. Its bloody pilloring by popular demand, and pandering to the crowd at its worst. It demeans the rule of law.

Jerry Brown – a man who in my humble opinion, is a moron, has always been a moron, and always WILL be a moron – had the following to say

California Attorney General Jerry Brown criticized the Sheriff’s Department for letting Hilton out of jail, saying he believed she should serve out her sentence.
“It does hold up the system to ridicule when the powerful and the famous get special treatment,” Brown told The Associated Press in an interview before testifying at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of people who’ve seen their family members go to jail and have various ailments, physical and psychological, that didn’t get them released,” he said. “I’d say it’s time for a course correction.”

Look, she isn’t getting “special” treatment. She is getting “special” punishment. She is famous. Very famous, and she has worked really hard to obtain it too. (When you consider she has no particular skills to speak of, its doubly impressive). Due to that, the law says that it can’t protect her in the general prison population, so she has to be confined to, what is in effect, solitary confinement. This is much, much harsher than what the general person has to endure.

For the final moronic quote on this whole tawdry affair

The last lawyer to speak was a deputy city attorney, David Bozanich, who declared: “This is a simple case. There was a court. The Sheriff’s Department chose to violate that order. There is no ambiguity.”

Uhmm, sorry, but it has yet to be determined who has the authority here.

Notice that the government is admitting that it can’t run its prison properly. I don’t care who you are – there should be no problem, at all, with you being in the general prison population. Since the government is choosing to lock you up, they are then responsible for your safety, and prisoners should always be safe. You should never have an instance of a prisoner harming another prisoner. People always point out how expensive that is, and the answer to that is simple – if you aren’t willing to treat prisoners correctly, don’t make them prisoners. The U.S has become so draconian in its laws, that we have a huge prison population that should not be there.

Note: Unlike my usual policy, I’m not including links here, though most of the info came from popular articles on Yahoo. This isn’t news, its just my personal opinion.

Look, Paris committed a very minor offense. It was a technical violation of her parole, and her stated reasons for violating it were believable. It is utterly absurd and asinine that she was sentenced to jail time over this incident. I know it seems appropriate based on her lifestyle, shallowness and general attitude. BUT, here is a newsflash. The law is setup to punish for specific incidents. If someone like Paris can be sentenced to what is, in practice, solitary confinement, for an absurd little parole violation, then anyone can.

Remember that by protecting the rights of unpopular people, that you are protecting your own rights.

It looks like chickens are in the middle of a boom time. This doesn’t surprise me – there are a lot of benefits to keeping chickens – eggs, a reduced number of insects, fertilizer, enjoyment etc. And, according to the Tinderbox blog, this boom time extends to urban chickens.

I wonder, what effect this urban boom is having on heritage chickens? Heritage animals in general are also enjoying a bit of a boom time. Hopefully the two trends – urban chickens, and heritage animals/chickens will collide. I know that I wouldn’t mind a small flock of buckeyes, to kill one and fry it up on occasion.

I don’t pay much attention to my dad’s chickens, except to listen to his tales of woe about keeping them alive. You don’t ever realize how many predators you have in an area until you try keeping something that they want to eat. This is his fourth or fifth attempt to keep chickens, and it is going slightly better than his older attempts. Still, he has killed several foxes (both grey and red) were killing chickens. The last grey fox he killed was a mother fox, blatantly killing and eating chickens in the middle of the day. He also trapped and carted off one of the neighbors cats recently. Perhaps he would have more luck if he wasn’t trying to keep them free range.

The most interesting critter he has had disturbing his chickens was a five foot long king snake. He had caught the snake around his chicken house twice, and carried it off each time. The last time he carried it a bit over a half mile away. The very next day he caught it in a chicken nest, with five eggs already eaten (you could count the lumps) and another going down. This time, he killed the snake. Which, its always a shame when you have to kill a large king snake, since overall they are very beneficial critters.

Well, just a couple of days ago, my macaw called me a dumbass. Aside from this being incredibly amusing, its not a good thing. While its not a strong cuss word, it is a cuss word, and as such, shouldn’t be spoken by a parrot. Even a (cough) sweet one like Harley.

So, from now on, my replacement word is donut. Instead of calling my dogs, or birds, dumbass’es when they do something stupid or clumsy, now I will call them donuts. So far tonight, I’ve called my dogs donuts 5 times. They are in rare form – lets all compete to see who can get right under dad’s feet when he walks, and then we stop!!!

Stupid Donuts.